The act of robbing an ATM would obviously be criminal. Taking a photo of an ATM? No way Joze.
I never said or implied that the taking of the photo was illegal. But, the police don't actually need to witness an illegal act to obtain justification for the detainment of an individual.
That you're carrying something that could be used as a club that's covered in blood. Thus, probable suspicion.
And the picture of the ATM could be used to facilitate a robbery. Thus, reasonable suspicion.
A police officer coming across a person carrying the bloody bat has no idea if the blood is animal or human, from someone else or from the person carrying it, or even that it is blood at all. Just as the police officer coming to the scene of the ATM picture has no idea if the picture is part of a plot to steal from the ATM.
Whereas taking a picture of an ATM in an open area is not. a. crime.
Neither is the carrying of the bloody bat. That's my point. Neither one is a crime. So, why would a police officer be justified in detaining someone carrying a bloody bat?
Sure, it had to come from somewhere; and the person taking the picture of an open ATM had to be taking it for some reason.
There are plenty of reasons why someone would be walking down the street with a bloody baseball bat; not all of them are illegal, but some are. There are also plenty of reasons why a person would take a picture of the inside of an ATM; not all of them are illegal, but some are.
Now, why is carrying a bloody baseball bat radically different than taking the picture?
whereas carrying a camera proves what, exactly?
What does carrying a bloody baseball bat prove? You spent your entire post insulting me, instead of actually, you know, making a coherent argument.
You can't seriously be equating carrying a bloody weapon with carrying a camera, can you?
I'm not equating them at all, merely pointing out the fact that an illegal act is not necessary to create reasonable suspicion. A bloody baseball bat is no more illegal than this taking of a picture. I'm saying that this is not an issue of a clear black-and-white difference in kind, but a subtle matter of degree.
I'm not defending the actions of any of the people in this person's account of the events, but am refuting the overly simplistic views of the GP.
So if I, say, consistently attack the mayor of my town as a small-minded roach with the ethics of a five dollar whore and the administrative capability of an schizophrenic chimpanzee, I could be charged with harassment?
No, probably not. But, it depends on how you say it.
Are you calling him 20 times a day, on his home phone, and telling him that? Then maybe it's harassment.
Are you calling his friends/family, and telling them the same? Maybe harassment.
Do you come to his office every day, with the sole purpose of telling him that? Maybe harassment.
Are you following him around town, leaving notes on his car, mailing him letters, or handing out fliers to his neighbors? Maybe harassment.
But... Posting your opinions (no matter their content) on your blog. Probably not harassment.
It's not so much about what you're saying, but how you say it. Hell, repeatedly calling someone on the phone, and saying nothing, can still be harassment.
All this bill is attempting to do is apply the same logic to the "cyber" realm.
If I continuously call a politician a slimy bitch for taking my tax dollars and wasting them on a $20 million performing arts center that is leaking money faster than the city leaders ever could have possibly imagined all while smiling and ignoring the question when it's posed by others, then according to what I just pasted above, I'm harassing them--which I am not.
Depending on how you "continuously call" that politician a "slimy bitch", you're probably not engaging in an activity which would qualify as harassment.
Sorry. Simply posting your rants on some blog doesn't count as harassment. And this bill does not change that.
Yes, I purposefully used the language I did to make a point--I would be arrested and imprisoned under that proposed legislation for posting what I just did. I hope I made my point.
No, you just failed to make your point, and evidently, failed to read the bill, as well. I know it's very easy to argue against straw-men, but this is a serious issue, which deserves a serious debate.
If I call you a mealy-mouthed anti-intellectual pompous turd-brained gutter rat with a Terry Schiavo-like IQ and all the sense one would expect from a decayed chunk of dog vomit, you think I should be fined or go to jail?
No, I don't... And neither does this bill. It is criminalizing communications, sent "with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior [...]". So, no your statement does not apply.
If you're going to debate the issue, try debating, you know, the issue; not some random stuff you make up.
After all, once you let Time Warner decide they can prioritize voip traffic over other traffic, what's to stop them from prioritizing their voip service over something like vonage?
When they prioritize traffic based on its type (VOIP, FTP, HTTP, etc.), that's QoS shaping. When they prioritize traffic of the same type, based on its destination or origin, that violates network neutrality.
If they give higher priority to VOIP traffic, regardless of the provider, that's just QoS shaping. When they prioritize their own VOIP offering over a competitor's, that violates network neutrality.
That ISP is NOT network neutral, they are either dumb or flat out fraudulent.
There's a world of difference between QoS and network neutrality. The examples he cites are QoS related, and have nothing to do with network neutrality.
Yep, Sheevaplug rocks. 500GB USB drive, rTorrent, and then uShare to the Xbox360. No muss, no fuss, no hassle. And, it has the capacity to do a lot more. Works out of the box, and everything is just an apt-get away.
So, to take 2 examples from more or less opposite ends of the spectrum, smoking weed at home or hiding Jews from the Nazis don't count as ethical disobedience?
Those may be ethical, and they certainly would qualify as disobedience, but don't rise to the standard of "civil disobedience". The goal of civil disobedience is to precipitate a change to the law by drawing popular attention to its unconscionability.
Smoking weed at home, if done properly, will have no legal consequences and does nothing to point a spotlight on drug laws, hence it cannot change popular opinion.
Now, if you stood in front of city hall, lit up a joint, waited for the police to come out and arrest you, and submitted to whatever punishment the law requires, that would be civil disobedience (Bonus points are awarded for alerting the media beforehand, and getting as many people as possible to join you). Hopefully, you've raised awareness, and demonstrated exactly how assinine the law you're fighting really is.
If everyone in the world has access to the information then why bother paying for the degree?
Education != Information.
Just because I have a good portion of the world's information at my fingertips, doesn't mean that I know how to access, correlate, digest, or comprehend it. That's what college is for; it's not just rote memorization of facts.
As long as I can prove my understanding of the knowledge then why should I pay a particular university to vouch for me?
The degree is supposed to be the proof of your understanding. A equally comprehensive test would take just as long, and cost just as much.
if you wish to destroy something and replace it with something else, you are still a nihilist if you have no articulation of what that "something else" is
I understand your argument completely; though I disagree with two of your premises.
First, I would say that a desire for "something else"--even if you don't know what that "something" is--is enough to make you not a nihilist. A true nihilist has no expectation that there is "something else" at all, let alone a desire to find it. Nietzsche, again and again throughout his works, expresses a desire to transcend traditional morality. He is constantly groping about, trying to discern its true nature. I would say that makes him not a nihilist; a nihilist would not be seeking a morality he didn't believe existed.
Secondly, Nietzsche did have an articulation of that "something else". No, it wasn't as systemic as Kant or others, but that is the nature of the alternative he was advocating. Of course, someone advocating a more personal, and less universal system of morals may be confused with someone who believes none exist. It is a fine line.
Don't read this as a defense of Nietzsche's ideas. It's not. I think he was fundamentally wrong about many things, and would agree with your assessment of his thinking as adolescent. But, to call him a nihilist (without extensive caveats), renders the term "nihilist" meaningless.
otherwise, what nietzsche is doing is what every teenager does: destroy his faith in his society to have some psychological mobility, then rebuild it later as he settles down in adulthood.
Okay. That makes him not a nihilist. A true nihilist would skip the whole "rebuilding" step.
nietzsche is mediocre. his popularity stems simply from the resonance he shares with teenage psychology. anyone who matures past the teenage years feels no real affinity for anything nietzsche ruminates about. (where "teenage years" refers to a psychological condition, not an actual chronological time period: plenty of 40 year olds are still psychologically teenagers)
None of your opinions on Nietzsche matter, with regard to calling him a nihilist, other than the one I quoted first. It doesn't matter how stupid, silly, adolescent, or mediocre his philosophy is.
What you're saying is: "I disagree with what he thought, therefore he is a nihilist." When, in actuality, the word "nihilism" has a meaning which is completely unaffected by your agreement.
prattling on about a superman does not count [...]
Why... Because you say so?
it does no good to overthrow an existing order without properly articulating a new one
otherwise, your effect is nihilism, whether actively espouse that philosophy or not
He did articulate a new one. Whether you agree with it or not--or even find it silly--does not change the fact that Nietzsche was offering an alternative; an alternative that a nihilist, by definition, is not.
nihilism is purposeless and random. coding therefore cannot have anything to do with nietzsche, since it is all structure
That's all well and good. But, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist. In fact, he wrote extensively in opposition to it. While both Nietzsche and the nihilists agreed on the illegitimacy of the existing moral order, Nietzsche wanted to replace it with something new, while nihilists insist that no such thing is possible.
It also says in everything I can find that it's a decision-making tool, not an accounting tool. So the analogy that it's the same as writing a check for the opportunity cost's dollar amount is misleading at best.
Opportunity cost is not always the same as the accounting cost, but sometimes it is.
Going back to the simplified example I offered earlier: If Tesla could get a $100, one year loan from the market for 10%, but the government is offering them the same loan at 4%, my argument is that the opportunity cost is $6 (the difference in interest rates). I'm saying that this action is the equivelent of the government cutting Tesla a check for $6, and letting them get the loan on the open market. The opportunity cost is the same as the actual cost.
In the first case, where the government makes the loan at 4%, first the government has to tax the $100 from the "private economy". Then they loan that money to Tesla. After the year, if they haven't defaulted, Tesla has gotten an extra $4 from the "private economy" (either from profiting from selling cars or raising additional capital), and pays the government back $104. The government can now lower taxes by $104, because it has that money. So, the "private economy" and the government end up even, and Tesla got the use of the $100 for one year.
In the second case, where the government cuts Tesla a six dollar check, the government taxes $6 from the "private economy", and gives it to Tesla. Tesla gets the 10% loan from the "private economy" for $100. After one year, Tesla pays the loan back, with the $6 from the government and $4 from the "private economy" (again, from selling cars). And again, the economy and government come out even, and Tesla got the use of the money for one year.
In what way are those two scenarios functionally different?
Is that truly the issue at hand, though? The Government wants to see R&D in a certain direction, and set aside funds towards that aim. A fiscally viable company applied for a loan from those funds. If they wanted to see credit cards and student loans paid off sooner, and banks were unable or unwilling to make loans at the lower interest rate, then I'm sure they would do the same.
I think it relates to the issue at hand. I'm arguing that there is a real, tangible cost to this loan. If that is the case, there are real cost/benefit decisions that need to be made. But, if there is no real cost involved, if it is all simply abstract opportunity cost, why not make an unlimited number of these loans. Because, if that were the case, the cost/benefit equation is all benefit and no cost.
Hence it is no longer an opportunity cost, as loaning at market rates is not the next-best decision.
One of the options for the use of that tax money is to never have collected it in the first place. In the hands of private citizens, who are able to lend the money at 10%, the opportunity cost for those people is at least $10. When the government collects that money as taxes instead, the opportunity cost of that taxation is at least $10, just as if the government itself was making the market-priced loans.
I'm not saying that lending the money at 10% is the next-best choice. But, it is the easiest to identify. It allows us to know that the opportunity cost of using the money is at least $10. There could be other, more beneficial, alternatives out there. It's just very hard to identify them and put a number on them.
Also, this money was set aside for a loan of this type before Tesla applied for it. So Tesla really is not in the Opportunity Cost equation at all.
But Congress can change that allocation any time it wants. They can simply pass legislation which changes the purpose of those funds. It's not set in stone.
Slashdot Mirror
The act of robbing an ATM would obviously be criminal. Taking a photo of an ATM? No way Joze.
I never said or implied that the taking of the photo was illegal. But, the police don't actually need to witness an illegal act to obtain justification for the detainment of an individual.
That you're carrying something that could be used as a club that's covered in blood. Thus, probable suspicion.
And the picture of the ATM could be used to facilitate a robbery. Thus, reasonable suspicion.
A police officer coming across a person carrying the bloody bat has no idea if the blood is animal or human, from someone else or from the person carrying it, or even that it is blood at all. Just as the police officer coming to the scene of the ATM picture has no idea if the picture is part of a plot to steal from the ATM.
Whereas taking a picture of an ATM in an open area is not. a. crime.
Neither is the carrying of the bloody bat. That's my point. Neither one is a crime. So, why would a police officer be justified in detaining someone carrying a bloody bat?
Blood on a bat had to come from somewhere...
Sure, it had to come from somewhere; and the person taking the picture of an open ATM had to be taking it for some reason.
There are plenty of reasons why someone would be walking down the street with a bloody baseball bat; not all of them are illegal, but some are. There are also plenty of reasons why a person would take a picture of the inside of an ATM; not all of them are illegal, but some are.
Now, why is carrying a bloody baseball bat radically different than taking the picture?
whereas carrying a camera proves what, exactly?
What does carrying a bloody baseball bat prove? You spent your entire post insulting me, instead of actually, you know, making a coherent argument.
You can't seriously be equating carrying a bloody weapon with carrying a camera, can you?
I'm not equating them at all, merely pointing out the fact that an illegal act is not necessary to create reasonable suspicion. A bloody baseball bat is no more illegal than this taking of a picture. I'm saying that this is not an issue of a clear black-and-white difference in kind, but a subtle matter of degree.
I'm not defending the actions of any of the people in this person's account of the events, but am refuting the overly simplistic views of the GP.
Taking a photo of an open ATM in a public area is not a crime.
Neither is walking down the street with a blood-covered baseball bat. But, I think the cops might be able to properly detain you because of it.
Don't want it in your back yard?
I think his point was that you don't even know what "it" is; nor have you the expertise to judge how hazardous "it" is to transport.
So if I, say, consistently attack the mayor of my town as a small-minded roach with the ethics of a five dollar whore and the administrative capability of an schizophrenic chimpanzee, I could be charged with harassment?
No, probably not. But, it depends on how you say it.
Are you calling him 20 times a day, on his home phone, and telling him that? Then maybe it's harassment.
Are you calling his friends/family, and telling them the same? Maybe harassment.
Do you come to his office every day, with the sole purpose of telling him that? Maybe harassment.
Are you following him around town, leaving notes on his car, mailing him letters, or handing out fliers to his neighbors? Maybe harassment.
But... Posting your opinions (no matter their content) on your blog. Probably not harassment.
It's not so much about what you're saying, but how you say it. Hell, repeatedly calling someone on the phone, and saying nothing, can still be harassment.
All this bill is attempting to do is apply the same logic to the "cyber" realm.
If I continuously call a politician a slimy bitch for taking my tax dollars and wasting them on a $20 million performing arts center that is leaking money faster than the city leaders ever could have possibly imagined all while smiling and ignoring the question when it's posed by others, then according to what I just pasted above, I'm harassing them--which I am not.
Depending on how you "continuously call" that politician a "slimy bitch", you're probably not engaging in an activity which would qualify as harassment.
Sorry. Simply posting your rants on some blog doesn't count as harassment. And this bill does not change that.
Yes, I purposefully used the language I did to make a point--I would be arrested and imprisoned under that proposed legislation for posting what I just did. I hope I made my point.
No, you just failed to make your point, and evidently, failed to read the bill, as well. I know it's very easy to argue against straw-men, but this is a serious issue, which deserves a serious debate.
If I call you a mealy-mouthed anti-intellectual pompous turd-brained gutter rat with a Terry Schiavo-like IQ and all the sense one would expect from a decayed chunk of dog vomit, you think I should be fined or go to jail?
No, I don't... And neither does this bill. It is criminalizing communications, sent "with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior [...]". So, no your statement does not apply.
If you're going to debate the issue, try debating, you know, the issue; not some random stuff you make up.
I will not believe that you can sign away your constitutional rights.
Try telling a drill instructor that.
Anthropomorphism hates being used in an analogy.
After all, once you let Time Warner decide they can prioritize voip traffic over other traffic, what's to stop them from prioritizing their voip service over something like vonage?
When they prioritize traffic based on its type (VOIP, FTP, HTTP, etc.), that's QoS shaping. When they prioritize traffic of the same type, based on its destination or origin, that violates network neutrality.
If they give higher priority to VOIP traffic, regardless of the provider, that's just QoS shaping. When they prioritize their own VOIP offering over a competitor's, that violates network neutrality.
They are very different concepts.
In your original post, you didn't specify that the VOIP they were prioritizing was their own.
That ISP is NOT network neutral, they are either dumb or flat out fraudulent.
There's a world of difference between QoS and network neutrality. The examples he cites are QoS related, and have nothing to do with network neutrality.
The best cheaters won't be caught, but that doesn't mean they're not cheaters.
Sufficiently advanced cheating is indistinguishable from original work.
How can you know that everyone isn't cheating? Do you give up? Or, try and pick the low-hanging fruit?
Yep, Sheevaplug rocks. 500GB USB drive, rTorrent, and then uShare to the Xbox360. No muss, no fuss, no hassle. And, it has the capacity to do a lot more. Works out of the box, and everything is just an apt-get away.
So, to take 2 examples from more or less opposite ends of the spectrum, smoking weed at home or hiding Jews from the Nazis don't count as ethical disobedience?
Those may be ethical, and they certainly would qualify as disobedience, but don't rise to the standard of "civil disobedience". The goal of civil disobedience is to precipitate a change to the law by drawing popular attention to its unconscionability.
Smoking weed at home, if done properly, will have no legal consequences and does nothing to point a spotlight on drug laws, hence it cannot change popular opinion.
Now, if you stood in front of city hall, lit up a joint, waited for the police to come out and arrest you, and submitted to whatever punishment the law requires, that would be civil disobedience (Bonus points are awarded for alerting the media beforehand, and getting as many people as possible to join you). Hopefully, you've raised awareness, and demonstrated exactly how assinine the law you're fighting really is.
this assumes they have any vested interest in keeping the civilian population alive.
Well, yeah... Why wouldn't they? You think they would invade for Lebensraum or something?
The Running Man book predicted the prevalence of reality TV [...]
It also predicted the use of a very effective method for the destruction of a skyscraper.
If everyone in the world has access to the information then why bother paying for the degree?
Education != Information.
Just because I have a good portion of the world's information at my fingertips, doesn't mean that I know how to access, correlate, digest, or comprehend it. That's what college is for; it's not just rote memorization of facts.
As long as I can prove my understanding of the knowledge then why should I pay a particular university to vouch for me?
The degree is supposed to be the proof of your understanding. A equally comprehensive test would take just as long, and cost just as much.
if you wish to destroy something and replace it with something else, you are still a nihilist if you have no articulation of what that "something else" is
I understand your argument completely; though I disagree with two of your premises.
First, I would say that a desire for "something else"--even if you don't know what that "something" is--is enough to make you not a nihilist. A true nihilist has no expectation that there is "something else" at all, let alone a desire to find it. Nietzsche, again and again throughout his works, expresses a desire to transcend traditional morality. He is constantly groping about, trying to discern its true nature. I would say that makes him not a nihilist; a nihilist would not be seeking a morality he didn't believe existed.
Secondly, Nietzsche did have an articulation of that "something else". No, it wasn't as systemic as Kant or others, but that is the nature of the alternative he was advocating. Of course, someone advocating a more personal, and less universal system of morals may be confused with someone who believes none exist. It is a fine line.
Don't read this as a defense of Nietzsche's ideas. It's not. I think he was fundamentally wrong about many things, and would agree with your assessment of his thinking as adolescent. But, to call him a nihilist (without extensive caveats), renders the term "nihilist" meaningless.
otherwise, what nietzsche is doing is what every teenager does: destroy his faith in his society to have some psychological mobility, then rebuild it later as he settles down in adulthood.
Okay. That makes him not a nihilist. A true nihilist would skip the whole "rebuilding" step.
nietzsche is mediocre. his popularity stems simply from the resonance he shares with teenage psychology. anyone who matures past the teenage years feels no real affinity for anything nietzsche ruminates about. (where "teenage years" refers to a psychological condition, not an actual chronological time period: plenty of 40 year olds are still psychologically teenagers)
None of your opinions on Nietzsche matter, with regard to calling him a nihilist, other than the one I quoted first. It doesn't matter how stupid, silly, adolescent, or mediocre his philosophy is.
What you're saying is: "I disagree with what he thought, therefore he is a nihilist." When, in actuality, the word "nihilism" has a meaning which is completely unaffected by your agreement.
prattling on about a superman does not count [...]
Why... Because you say so?
it does no good to overthrow an existing order without properly articulating a new one
otherwise, your effect is nihilism, whether actively espouse that philosophy or not
He did articulate a new one. Whether you agree with it or not--or even find it silly--does not change the fact that Nietzsche was offering an alternative; an alternative that a nihilist, by definition, is not.
nihilism is purposeless and random. coding therefore cannot have anything to do with nietzsche, since it is all structure
That's all well and good. But, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist. In fact, he wrote extensively in opposition to it. While both Nietzsche and the nihilists agreed on the illegitimacy of the existing moral order, Nietzsche wanted to replace it with something new, while nihilists insist that no such thing is possible.
It also says in everything I can find that it's a decision-making tool, not an accounting tool. So the analogy that it's the same as writing a check for the opportunity cost's dollar amount is misleading at best.
Opportunity cost is not always the same as the accounting cost, but sometimes it is.
Going back to the simplified example I offered earlier: If Tesla could get a $100, one year loan from the market for 10%, but the government is offering them the same loan at 4%, my argument is that the opportunity cost is $6 (the difference in interest rates). I'm saying that this action is the equivelent of the government cutting Tesla a check for $6, and letting them get the loan on the open market. The opportunity cost is the same as the actual cost.
In the first case, where the government makes the loan at 4%, first the government has to tax the $100 from the "private economy". Then they loan that money to Tesla. After the year, if they haven't defaulted, Tesla has gotten an extra $4 from the "private economy" (either from profiting from selling cars or raising additional capital), and pays the government back $104. The government can now lower taxes by $104, because it has that money. So, the "private economy" and the government end up even, and Tesla got the use of the $100 for one year.
In the second case, where the government cuts Tesla a six dollar check, the government taxes $6 from the "private economy", and gives it to Tesla. Tesla gets the 10% loan from the "private economy" for $100. After one year, Tesla pays the loan back, with the $6 from the government and $4 from the "private economy" (again, from selling cars). And again, the economy and government come out even, and Tesla got the use of the money for one year.
In what way are those two scenarios functionally different?
Is that truly the issue at hand, though? The Government wants to see R&D in a certain direction, and set aside funds towards that aim. A fiscally viable company applied for a loan from those funds. If they wanted to see credit cards and student loans paid off sooner, and banks were unable or unwilling to make loans at the lower interest rate, then I'm sure they would do the same.
I think it relates to the issue at hand. I'm arguing that there is a real, tangible cost to this loan. If that is the case, there are real cost/benefit decisions that need to be made. But, if there is no real cost involved, if it is all simply abstract opportunity cost, why not make an unlimited number of these loans. Because, if that were the case, the cost/benefit equation is all benefit and no cost.
Hence it is no longer an opportunity cost, as loaning at market rates is not the next-best decision.
One of the options for the use of that tax money is to never have collected it in the first place. In the hands of private citizens, who are able to lend the money at 10%, the opportunity cost for those people is at least $10. When the government collects that money as taxes instead, the opportunity cost of that taxation is at least $10, just as if the government itself was making the market-priced loans.
I'm not saying that lending the money at 10% is the next-best choice. But, it is the easiest to identify. It allows us to know that the opportunity cost of using the money is at least $10. There could be other, more beneficial, alternatives out there. It's just very hard to identify them and put a number on them.
Also, this money was set aside for a loan of this type before Tesla applied for it. So Tesla really is not in the Opportunity Cost equation at all.
But Congress can change that allocation any time it wants. They can simply pass legislation which changes the purpose of those funds. It's not set in stone.